Thursday 08 July

Went to Ayda camp to finish the mural. Heidi and Grace also came to paint, and later Kelly from Holy Land Trust. As the mural reaches it final stages, the enthusiasm and the ideas are at its peak.

The staff at The Lagee Center have expressed bigger satisfaction each day and are arranging a celebration of the mural's completion.

It is almost as if the mural has briefly taken people minds off 'The Wall'. Members of the community stop for longer and talk about the different scenes and are making positive comments. Refreshment are constantly provided at the atmosphere is great.

Unfortunately, some young men and boys began loitering at the end of the road, collecting rocks and taunting the Israeli soldiers. It wasn't long before the tear gas and percussion grenades came flying into our street and the crowd of youths grew larger and more active.

Young men fired from catapults and hurled rocks one after the other. One man hurled a gas bomb back towards the soldiers, causing a great cheer from the crowd.

It was becoming very difficult to continue working, as we had to run for cover each time a gas bomb or percussion grenade was thrown towards us.

We were getting fed up with the youths and wanted to ask them to stop, or move to another street so we could finish our work. But this was out of the question.

A car drove past and wound up his windows to keep the gas away from three upset children. Concentrating on our work became more difficult as we had to keep looking over our shoulders to avoid unwanted missiles.

An Israeli soldier came into the street and fired one gas bomb after another and we all ran into The Lagee Center for cover. Inside children were playing shoot 'em up games on the computers.

We managed to close the windows lust before a gas bomb hit the grill. When the gas died down we quickly packed up and went to be fed good food at a near by house. We decided over coffee, that we would postpone the mural's completion and following celebrations to Monday.

Paul Gent